Housing Pre and Post Recession - Lab Report Example

From figure 1, we see that the data starts off from the middle of a recession in 1982. It lasted only till the 4th quarter of the year. The percentage of GDP growth since then rose sharply until the 2nd quarter of 1982 and then started gradually moderating. The ensuing period was characterized by some volatility until the 1st quarter of 1991 from where the GDP growth dipped sharply and the second recession initiated. This recession also lasted only for two quarters. The decade of the 1990s marked a steady climb in the GDP growth rate and signs of the next recession were observed only in the first quarter of 2000 since when it started decreasing rapidly.

This third recession lasted from the 1st quarter of 2001 to the last quarter of the same year. There was a small climb in terms of GDP growth since then until 2007. From the last quarter of 2007 the recent recession set in and it lasted for seven quarters making it the longest recession in the time horizon under consideration. Figure 1 Housing Starts Turning to the Housing markets, we start by looking at housing starts in Figure 2. Interestingly, apart from a steady dip a few quarters ahead of the current recession, inter-temporal movements in housing starts have been moderately stable.

The recessions do not seem to have affected housing starts to any considerable extents and we find only small dips in the first two recessions. Strangely during the third recession, we find that housing starts actually increased. However, it can also be seen from the graph that housing starts exhibit a marked decline from around the 3rd quarter of 2005 onwards well into the recent recession. Figure 2 Average real housing prices The next housing market indicator considered is the real average housing price.

As can be seen from figure 3, housing prices exhibit smooth but evident cyclical movements. Comparing these movements with figure 1 reveals that in terms of trends the housing price movements particularly in the latter half of the time horizon match those of the real GDP growth although real GDP volatility is considerably higher. The peaks and the troughs in the average housing price time plots are clearly distinguishable and there are substantially lesser reversals making the series a lot smoother.

Although resemblances in trend are not so clear in the quarters before 2000, since then the GDP growth and housing prices seem to follow very similar patterns. Figure 3 Months’ supply Finally, in figure 4 below, we look at movements in months’ supply of housing across the duration considered. In between the first two recessions here, the series seems to have been substantially volatile though stably so, around a mean of 2. Thereon, the movements of the series have been relatively less volatile.

Figure 4 We see from the figure that months’ supply has declined in periods subsequent to the 1st, 2nd and 4th recessions. After the 1982 recession, housing supply exhibits a small decline in the general trend although it as mentioned earlier fluctuated around an average. A more pronounced decline in the series occurred following the 2nd recession in 1991. The strong declining trend during this phase continued on through the onset of the third recession. There was a surge in early 2005 reflecting what we know now as the gradually forming housing bubble.

The series attained its maximum halfway into the fourth recession. The housing supply series seems to reflect a lagged